Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Consistency, Thou Art A Jewel

A dentist removed my pain-generating wisdom tooth this afternoon and prescribed me painkillers of great joy. So I’m in a fine mood regardless of what I find in the news, though I’ll admit the blaring headline about the Marine Corps’ involuntary call-up harshed my (perfectly legal) buzz a little. Then I read the story, which says the Individual Ready Reserve is being called up:

The U.S. Marine Corps said Tuesday it has been authorized to recall thousands of Marines to active duty, primarily because of a shortage of volunteers for duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. Up to 2,500 Marines will be brought back at any one time, but there is no cap on the total number of Marines who may be forced back into service in the coming years as the military battles the war on terror. The call-ups will begin in the next several months.

This is the first time the Marines have had to use the involuntary recall since the early days of the Iraq combat. The Army has ordered back about 14,000 soldiers since the start of the war.

Since I haven’t been following the Marines’ recruiting woes I thought that they, like the Army, had been using the IRR all along. So I merely skimmed over the story before turning to the comment forum, which hosted a debate on bringing back the draft. And it’s beautiful, the gem of self-contradiction I found on the very first page:

As a 21 year old man, I should be the first to stand against the draft, however i feel completely the opposite. I feel our troops over in the middle east need a break and if I can back them in any way, I would be proud to do so for my country. Although I have not signed up for the army, if they needed me, I would be there.

I’ll read it again when the pills wear off and see if it’s still hilarious. Betcha it is.

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About Me

Jennifer Abel is an American writer who began her career in print media three minutes before the Internet killed the industry. After starting at a small Connecticut daily she moved to the Hartford Advocate, an alt-weekly where her journalistic coups included infiltrating a Furries convention and working on a phone sex line (which fired her six hours later). Since then she’s written for, or been reprinted in, dozens of print and web outlets, including Playboy, the Guardian, Salon, AlterNet, Mashable, the Daily Dot and pretty much every website with the words "cannabis" or "legalize it" in the title. Once, when she was young and naïve and needed the money, she unwittingly edited SEO copy for a spammer. However, in light of the spambot comments she’s deleted from her own blogs since then, she figures she’s more than repaid that particular karmic debt. Jennifer is currently looking for professional, non-spam writing jobs; interested editors are enthusiastically invited to e-mail her.